Tom Ossington's Ghost

Nor was the meal which followed of a familiar type. The resources of the larder were not manifold, but all that it contained was placed upon the table. The pièce de resistance consisted of six boiled eggs.

"If you boil all those eggs," Ella declared, when Madge laid on them a predatory hand, "there'll be nothing left in the house for breakfast."

"The man is famished," retorted Madge with some inconsequence. "What does breakfast matter to us if the man is starving." So the six were boiled. And he ate them all. Indeed he ate all there was to eat-devoured would have been the more appropriate word. For he attacked his food with a voracity which it was not nice to witness, bolting it with a complete disregard to rules which suggest the advisability of preliminary mastication.

It was not until his wolf-like appetite was, at least, somewhat appeased by the consumption of nearly all the food that was on the table, that Madge approached the subject which was uppermost in all their thoughts.

"As I was saying, Mr. Ballingall, Mr. Graham has told us of all that passed between you."

At the moment he had a piece of bread in one hand and some cheese in the other-all the cheese that was left. The satisfaction of his appetite seemed to have increased his ferocity. Cramming both morsels into his mouth at once, he turned on her with a sort of half-choked snarl.

"Then what right had he to do that?"

"It seems to me that he had a good deal of right."

"How? Who's he? A lawyer out of a job, who comes and offers me his services. I'm his client. As his client I give him my confidence. Looking at it from the professional point of view only, what right has he to pass my confidence on to any one? – any one! He's been guilty of a dirty and disgraceful action, and he knows it. You know it, you do." He snarled across the board at Graham. "If I were to report him to the Law Society they'd take him off the rolls."

"I question it."

Madge's tone was dry.

"You may question it-but I know what I'm talking about. What use does he make of the confidence which he worms out of me?"

"I wormed nothing out of you." The interruption was Graham's. "Whatever you said to me was said spontaneously, without the slightest prompting on my part."

"What difference does that make? – Then what use does he make of what I said spontaneously? He knows that I am a poor driven devil, charged with a crime which I never committed. I explain to him how it happened that that crime comes to be laid against me, how I've been told that there's money waiting for me in a certain place, which is mine for the fetching, and how, when I went to fetch it, I was snapped for burglary. I'm found guilty of what I never did, and I get twelve months. In this country law and justice are two different things. What does my lawyer-my own lawyer, who pressed on me his services, mind! – do, while I'm in prison for what I never did? He takes advantage of my confidence, and without a word to me, or a hint of any sort, he goes and looks for my money-my money, mind! – on his own account-and for all I know he's got it in his pocket now."

"That he certainly has not."

This was Madge.

"Then it isn't his fault if he hasn't. Can you think of anything dirtier? not to speak of more unprofessional? Why one thief wouldn't behave to another thief like that-not if he was a touch above the carrion. Here have I, an innocent man, been rotting in gaol, think, think, thinking of what I'd do with the money when I did come out, and here was the man who ought to have been above suspicion, and whom I thought was above suspicion, plotting and planning all the time how he could rob me of what he very well knew was the only thing which could save me from the outer darkness of hell and of despair."

Graham motioned Madge to silence.

"One moment, Miss Brodie. You must not suppose, Mr. Ballingall, that because I suffer you to make your sweeping charges against me without interruption, that I admit their truth, or the justice of the epithets which you permit yourself to apply to me. On the contrary, I assert that your statements are for the most part wholly unjustifiable, and that where they appear to have some measure of justification, they are easily capable of complete explanation. Whatever you may continue to say I shall decline to argue with you here. If you will come to my rooms I will give you every explanation you can possibly desire."

"Yes, I daresay, – and take the earliest opportunity of handing me over to the first convenient copper. Unless I'm mistaken, that's the kind of man you are."

Madge caught the speaker by the sleeve of his ragged coat, with a glance at Graham, whose countenance had grown ominously black.

"If you will take my advice, Mr. Ballingall, since it is plain that you know nothing of the mind of man Mr. Graham really is, instead of continuing to talk in that extremely foolish fashion you will listen to what I have to say. The night before last we were the victims of an attempted burglary-"

"I did it-you know I did it. I give myself away-if there's any giving about it. You can whistle for a constable, and give me into charge right off; I'm willing. Perhaps it'll turn out to be the same bobby I handled before, and then he'll be happier than ever."

"I am sorry to learn that you were the burglar-very sorry. My friend, Miss Duncan, and I were alone in the house, a fact of which you were probably aware." That Mr. Ballingall might still be possessed of some remnants of saving grace was suggested by the fact that, at this point, he winced. "Other considerations aside, it was hardly a heroic action to break, at dead of night, into a lonely cottage, whose only inmates were a couple of unprotected girls."

"There was a revolver fired."

"As you say, there was a revolver fired-by me, at the ceiling. Does that tend to strengthen the evidence which goes to show that the deed, on your part, was a courageous one?"

"I never said that it was."

"You are perfectly conscious that we shall not whistle for a policeman, and that we shall not give you into charge. Is it necessary for you to talk as if you thought we should?"

"Am I to be robbed-"

"I fancy that the robbing has not been all upon one side." Mr. Ballingall did not look happier. "The burglar left behind him a scrap of paper-"

"Oh, I did, did I? I wondered where it was."

"At present it is in the possession of the police."

"The devil!"

"You need not be alarmed." Mr. Ballingall had suddenly risen, as if disturbed by some reflection. "That was before we knew by whom we had been favoured. Now that we do know, the paper will not be used in evidence against you-nor the police either. Before handing over that scrap of paper we took a copy of the writing which was on it. That writing was a key to two secret hiding-places which are contained within this house."

"How do you know that?"

"By exercising a little of my elementary common sense. Observe, Mr. Ballingall." Rising from her seat, she crossed to the door. "On that paper which you were so good as to leave behind you it was written, 'Right'-I stand on the right of the door. 'Straight across'-I walk straight across the room. 'Three'-I measure three feet horizontally. 'Four'-and four feet perpendicularly. 'Up'-I push the panel up; it opens, and I find that there is something within. That, Mr. Ballingall, is how I know the paper was a guide to two secret hiding-places-by discovering the first. What is the matter with the man? Has he gone mad?"

The question, which was asked with a sudden and striking change of tone, was induced by the singularity of Mr. Ballingall's demeanour. He had started when Madge took up her position at the door, eyeing her following evolutions speechlessly, breathlessly, as if spellbound. Her slightest movement seemed to possess for him some curious fascination. As she proceeded, his agitation increased; every nerve seemed strained so that he might not lose the smallest detail of all that happened, until when, with dramatic gestures, she imitated the action of striking the panel, raising it, and taking out something which was contained within, he broke into cry after cry.

"My God! – my God! – my God!" he repeated, over and over again.

Covering his face with his hands, as if he strove to guard his eyes against some terrible vision, he crouched in a sort of heap on the floor.

CHAPTER XV

THE COMPANION OF HIS SOLITUDE

When he looked up, it was timidly, doubtfully, as if fearful of what he might see. He glanced about him anxiously from side to side, as if in search of something or some one.

"Tom! – Tom!" he said, speaking it was difficult to say to whom.

He paused, as if for an answer. When none came, he drew himself upright gradually, inch by inch. They noticed how his lips were twitching, and how the whole of his body trembled. He passed his hand over his eyes, as a man might who is waking from a dream. Then he stretched it out in front of him, palm upwards, with a something of supplication in the action which lent pathos to the words he uttered-words which in themselves were more than sufficiently bizarre.

"Do any of you believe in ghosts? – in disembodied spirits assuming a corporeal shape? – in the dead returning from their graves? Or is a man who thinks he sees a ghost, who knows he sees a ghost, who knows that a ghost is a continual attendant of his waking and of his sleeping hours alike-must such a man be in labour with some horrible delusion of his senses? Is his brain of necessity unhinged? Must he of a certainty be mad?"

Not only was such an interrogation in itself remarkable, but more especially was it so as coming from such a figure as Ballingall presented. His rags and dirt were in strange contrast with his language. His words, chosen as it seemed with a nice precision, came from his lips with all the signs of practiced ease. His manner, even his voice, assumed a touch of refinement which before it lacked. In him was displayed the spectacle of a man of talent and of parts encased in all the outward semblance of a creature of the kennel.

Madge, to whom the inquiry seemed to be more particularly addressed, replied to it with another.

"Why do you ask us such a question?"

About the man's earnestness, as he responded, there could be no doubt. The muscles of his face twitched as with St. Vitus' Dance; beads of sweat stood upon his brow; the intensity of his desire to give adequate expression to his thoughts seemed to hamper his powers of utterance.

"Because I want some one to help me-some one, God or man. Because, during the last year and more I have endured a continual agony to which I doubt if the pains of hell can be compared. Because things with me have come to such a pitch that it is only at times I know if I am dead or living, asleep or waking, mad or sane, myself or another."